Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 660
Social media today seems to be teeming with updates related to people saying that they're not feeling well. Gone are the joys of the holiday weekend and they've only been replaced with a lot of worry about everyone's health. This is all quite the stressful start to 2022.
And what can we do - the holidays are an important time for friends and family. And up until recently, things seemed generally okay despite it still being a pandemic. We had returned to a life of relative normalcy and even the MMFF pushed through with in-person movie screenings. But now this may not be the same can it seems almost impossible not to have a friend or family member having mentioned that they're experiencing flu-like symptoms.
The weather has been particularly chillier over the past week and this may also be a factor. One of the greatest tools that COVID-19 has at its disposal to aid its spread is the fact that most of its most common symptoms are the same things one might experience from the flu or even after working too hard or getting dehydrated. And thus it's a lot easier for it to sort of hiding in plain sight as we continue to treat it like the flu when it may not be the flu. Or we treat the flu-like COVID-19 and end up wondering why we've been overreacting or something.
It doesn't help that COVID-19 testing is both cost-prohibitive and more difficult than it needs to be. We have weird cases like how Watsons does sell antigen test kits, but you need a doctor's prescription to get one? The Red Cross has at least partnered with Angkas to administer testing, but it's not necessarily cheap, especially for lower-income households. I'm glad that the City of Taguig where we live does offer free RT-PCR testing, so that's another reassurance in terms of where we live - although scheduling is shit these days based on social media repoerts. But so many other LGUs may not have the resources to do the same thing.
I have no regrets about the weekend or all of our O Bar trips throughout December. While it was still a health risk to be around other people, it was also something we really needed for our emotional well-being. I just hope that this doesn't result in serious complications for our circle of friends. But we'll see how things go.
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